We advertise on TV alot locally.
Have an arrangement with two stations to maintain their sites, the station managers homes, and some of the higher ups homes. Give them back the money for ad's.
Our market is small so rates are not bad compared to major market areas (like Pittsburgh or Cleveland).

It MADE us in the local market.

Wives with money watch afternoon soaps.
Local news is primo.
Sports is good too. Especially golf and college hoops.
Prime time is expensive, but if you can afford it - it is great too.

John Allin had good information. It all depends on the audience you want to target. Spot tv is expensive, depending on the market. Using trade for advertising is a good idea. Agencies do it all the time. If you run your ads in the late fringe hours- after 11:30 pm, you can get some really good deals. Also, if you don't request specific times, you can also get a good deal. Prime time is very expensive. You must first figure out your demo-or target audience, this will determine when your ads should run. Radio is much less expensive and very effective. am and pm drive times are the best. All the people going to and from work are listening-again you have to figure out your target audience, this will determine which station you will want your ads on. For example Country music stations would have alot of 25-54 adult listeners. Obviously, you wouldn't want to advertise on the top 40 station-young demo. If you want to reach the older folks, you'll want to put your ads on stations that are mostly news/talk. Hope this helps.

I agree with JAAs & Linkys answer for the most part. In our area the few companies who have advertised seem to do so during the 530am local newscast and then again at the 530pm local newscast. I have been discussing the benefits with the local station here about exchanging services as they have highly recommend their desire to do so. It almost seems that this is how they choose their contractors. The commercial length in qussetion airs for 60 seconds.

The other alternative that you could possibly check into would be a Radio Format that is listened to by 95% of the local businesses. This way you know that at some point throughout the day the market that you are looking to target will get your name. I am currently checking into this as well. Have an inside source. I will get back to you as to whether or not they would consider swaping services too.

Well, I'm going to come clean on something. For about a year I worked at a television ratings company. I co-managed a field office for Arbitron ratings (if you do radio ads you'll know about them), where we metered and measured the viewing habits of a 400 household representative sample of the Detroit area.

TV stations take that rating data and turn to their advertisers to show them how they're good in this demo or that, so presumably the businesses will know where to put their money to effectively hit their market. So when it comes to that part of advertising, I feel pretty confident.

What I want to know is if those times the media promotes as good are really effective (I know the methodologies of collecting the samples and that their are potential flaws. The only real measure is measured advertising results, or sales leads). Did you see results proportional to the expense?

No, I have not done any advertising on radio or tv, however my wife works in the advertising business, and she has got the scoop. It is true that Abritron for radio and Nielsen for tv collects all of this information on listeners/veiwers. You have heard of Nielsen diaries where they send you a booklet and ask you to fill out the programs you watch for an entire week. This is how they get most of their data. In some cases they actually put a box in your home, if you consent, and monitor which stations you watch and which programs. All of this information is provided to ad agencies and to stations. Obviously stations want your $$ so they will tell you how the demo you are trying to reach fits with their programing. It's sort of common sense in that you have a good idea who would watch tv at certain hours of the day and who will watch certain programs. Prime time sort of encompasses everyone-so they say. It all depends on who you want to target as to which time you want your ad to run. That is really the bottom line. It's the same thing with print ads-who do you want to target? Again, sort of common sense. Each station has a share of the viewing audience and that is proven by the data collected by either Arbitron or Nielsen. So, hope that helps. You know that most of the information for both Nielsen and Arbitron is mostly based on the diaries and that could be very subjective. I was a Nielsen diary family and I have to admit by the end of the week I did not really care to be accurate. The main thing is to figure out your target audience.

You hit the nail on the head. Well, at least partly. Arbitron also was heavy into TV ratings - they folded that part of the biz back in '93 (I think they made some marketing errors, but that's another story). They're focus was on all the big markets, with 400-600 household samples in those markets. All were metered (boxes on all TV's, VCR's etc). And each household got a $10 check from us per month for their participation.

The flaw comes here - who are the people that agree to this (either meters or diaries)? Are they ones who just want the $10? Most importantly, do they REALLY represent what people in that market, earning that money, will do and buy? Only one way to know. Gotta measure results.

And I certainly don't intend to slight your spouse whose in that biz, but unless they measure advertising results (in sales, leads, whatever), there's really no way to tell whether the effort is a success, or why it is or isn't.

I'm going into depth here because I think I know what demos I want to hit, and it's easy enough to find out when they watch. But I wanted to find out what actually worked for people who had given it a go. I certainly appreciate the help, and maybe you can convince your spouse to post some info here about the measured success of media campaigns of this sort by some of the companies she's helped.